If you are Asian, African or Latin American, have you asked yourself: what would your country be if it had never been colonised? I reckon some of the answers would be: our country would never be modern, left behind, traditional and even barbarians. However, I really disagree with this. Who says our Indigenous knowledge is primitive, and why it sounds so? It is colonisers that forced us to think that way by convicted the world that their life was better than ours.
Colonisers, represented by Western countries, have been dividing the world system into two binaries: primitive vs modern, rational vs irrational, and superior vs inferior (Lugones, 2021). Even when we are talking about gender, it is a Western concept that introduces us to two categories of gender: men and women. We will talk about it later below. So, colonisation is not only about physical expropriation such as land claiming, mass killings, and forced labour but also economic, cultural, doctrine and psychological.
Even during the post-colonial period, the long-term colonisation has created a strong attitude and belief that Western countries are more powerful than the rest of the world. See, how many people in the Global South countries copy all infrastructure, architectures, lifestyle, mindset and even movements from the Global North. This includes social movements. Let’s take an example of feminism.
In Indonesia, many feminism movement are considered Western concept. It is not wrong. But it is not always true, too. It is not wrong, because feminism in Indonesia has been influenced by global movement during Dutch colonization. The feminist movement had begun when women had opportunity for Dutch education and joined associations such as Jong Java, Jong Sumatera, and Jong Ambon. Through these platforms, women become involved in public arena and took part in Sumpah Pemuda (Youth Congress) in 28 October 1928 (Arivia & Subono, 2017). But, it is not always true, because it has also been rooted in our own culture even before colonisation, albeit without definition. The feminist movement was always there, and is there, yet their voices are never heard.
Let’s talk about our women to make it clear. Women from Indigenous communities in Indonesia, who have been in the front lines of ‘feminist movements’ and fighting for women’s rights for their communities, have been silenced and represented by other ‘more educated women or men’ from other areas in Indonesia, or even from other countries. And that is why we never hear their narrative.
Well, most of us may know Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama, Gloria Steinem and even Emma Watson. However, have you heard about our Indonesian feminist leaders?
NO. I am not talking about the famous Kartini. I am talking about Rukmini Toheke of Central Sulawesi, who fights for indigenous rights. I am talking about Anggiasari of Yogyakarta who campaign for the rights of women with disabilities. And I will talk about Yustina Ogoney from Bintuni Bay, West Papua who actively work with other women to stand for their own lands. Many of us do not know who they are. Because their voices are never heard, particularly in national and global movements because it is submerged in mainstream feminism.
Local women have long determined their own feminisms that bring attention to the interconnection of all injustice matters and construct a new structure to work collectively towards radical change. We must acknowledge that we often homogenise ‘women’ as singular subject with similar problems: patriarchy. However, white, middle class, urban, and educated women place themselves at the top of the hierarchy and crown them as spoken persons for other women. Of course, they may understand women’s struggles, however, their perception of justice are seriously different with the majority of women in rural, poor, and indigenous communities. Furthermore, using the banner of global sisterhood can be very dangerous in silencing the voices of women in color, particularly in our country.
Thank to Kimberle Williams Crenshaw who has developed the framework of intersectionality and the #blacklivesmatter which helped to raise the issues. It has been argued that the intersectionality lens helped to understand certain social issues in different categories of gender, race, age, ability, sexuality, nationality, religions, and class which affect marginalisation (Crenshaw, 2019). Using intersectionality lens to analyse social issues will help to challenge the western-centric / urban-centric practice that categorize people into certain binaries, resulting in a complicated hierarchies.
However, if not careful, focus solely on intersectionality will move us away to the fact that oppression manifests differently for different women / people. While intersectionality help to comprehend many other factors in marginalisation and reimagine a non-universal woman, it is not enough to understand the complexity of the oppression, especially in the Global South. As Francoise Verges said, we must define feminism through racialised women’s eyes who have been leading anti colonial and anti racist struggles which can associate themselves with. Therefore, specifically in Indonesia, I witnessed and learned how our feminism cannot be equated with other feminist movements and that we have to embrace decolonial feminism.
Decolonial feminism in my word would be going back to our own root, own culture, own identity. Through decolonial feminism, it helps us to understand politics of gender with critical race theory and an analysis of colonial and capitalist power structures. Understanding decolonial feminism will help us to not reinforce colonialism and white supremacy that very often comes from mainstream feminism and global sisterhood. Decolonial feminism honour and comprehend intersectionality by adding cultural, historical and geopolitical lenses to the analysis. So come back to my original question: what it would be if our country has never been colonised?
So using the examples of some Indonesian women I mentioned above will help to understand that their feminism is not only to make them liberate from men, but also oppression that comes from capitalism and neo-colonisation. Those women embrace their identity, their cultures, their religions and make them speak up themselves. They are not the object of knowledge who can be studied (many Western people are obsessed with unveiling), but they are human beings, challenge power structure and create their own narratives.
Disclaimer
In this article, I locate myself as an outsider as I am a Javanese woman living in urban area and have opportunity to pursue a Western education in Australia. I could have a white perspective in this sense. Hence, I prefer not to discuss the story of three women I mentioned above in detail to respect their work. Also as I do not obtain permission, I will not represent their voices in this article.
Bibliography
Arivia, G., & Subono, N. I. (2017). A hundred years of feminism in Indonesia: An analysis of actors, debates and strategies (p. 28). The Friedrich-Ebert-Stiftung. https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/bueros/indonesien/13830.pdf
Crenshaw, K. (2019). On intersectionality: Essential writings. New Press.
Davies, S. G. Challenging Gender Norms: Five Genders Among Bugis in Indonesia (Case Studies in Cultural Anthropology) by Graham Davies, Sharyn (2006) Paperback.
Lugones, M. (2010). Toward a Decolonial Feminism. Hypatia, 25(4), 742–759.
Lugones, M. (2021). The Coloniality of Gender. In W. Harcourt (Ed.), The Palgrave handbook of gender and development: Critical engagements in feminist theory and practice (Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2016). Palgrave Macmillan.
